Audrey Diwan’s ‘Happening’ (L’événement) has won the Golden Lion in Venice for best film. Adapted from Ernaux’s autobiographical account, the film features Anamaria Vartolomei as Anne Duchesne, a student seeking a back-street abortion at a time when it was illegal in France.
The adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s 1991 Passion simple, by director Danielle Arbid, features actors Laetitia Dosch and Sergei Polunin. The love story between a Parisian lecturer and a Russian diplomat is available to watch on Curzon Home Cinema.
Set up and curated by Michèle Bacholle, who is also the author of many essays and a book on Ernaux, this ‘Musée Annie Ernaux‘ website provides an exploration into the main places which inhabit Ernaux’s writings – and in turn, the reader’s imagination. Through photographs and critical notes, Bacholle invites us to ‘enter’ these places.
As Annie Ernaux turns 80 this month, she features in an interview for the Financial Times (‘I never feel legitimate, yet I persevere’) and is named ‘Author of the month’ in the London Review Booskhop.
Régis Sauder’s documentary, J’ai aimé vivre là, is an evocation of Cergy-Pontoise, guided by the texts and voice of Annie Ernaux, who lives there. The film, which was presented at the International film festival in Marseilles in July 2020, will be out on screens in early 2021. The trailer and press review can be found here.
A Girl’s Story, the English translation of Mémoire de fille (trans. Alison L. Strayer), is being published simultaneously this week by Seven Stories Press and Fitzcarraldo Editions.
On 30 March 2020, Annie Ernaux addressed a letter to President Emmanuel Macron, in response to the coronavirus crisis. Her letter, originally entitled ‘Sachez, Monsieur le Président, que nous ne laisserons plus nous voler notre vie‘ and broadcast on France Inter, is translated in English by Alison L. Strayer as ‘Letter to the President‘.
Annie Ernaux’s The Years, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, has been announced as the 2019 winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. The prize was established by the University of Warwick in 2017 to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. This year’s prize was judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett. (Source: The University of Warwick/ Fitzcarraldo editions)
After the publication of The Years and Happening, Fizacarraldo editions are now bringing into the UK another important book by Annie Ernaux: I Remain in Darkness (trans. Tanya Leslie), the diary that Ernaux wrote as she witnessed her mother suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
Annie Ernaux will be taking part in the Edinburgh literature festival, discussing The Years on Wednesday 21st August. The next day, she will be at the Scotland French Institute to discuss her works and career with the editors of this site, Elise Hugueny-Léger and Lyn Thomas (in French). The audio recording of this encounter is available here.
